Optical and Electron Microscopy

... Biology essay: Optical and Electron Microscopy: Introduction: Microscopes allow us to see things so small they normally can't be seen by the naked eye. The intention of all microscopic studies is to produce an image that is a copy of the object, or the specimen. There are two main aspects to a microscope, which determine the image - magnification and resolution. The magnification is the number of times the image is linearly larger than the object. So, small objects will appear larger in the image under higher magnification than under lower magnification. The resolution, or resolving power, is the microscope's ability to differentiate between small objects that are close together. Theoretically the electron microscope has 100,000 x better resolving power than optical microscopes, but in practise the resolution of an electron microscope is at best 1 nm (nanometre), i.e. two objects less than 1 nm apart will be seen as one. Optical

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